HUD SECRETARY DONOVAN ANNOUNCES $2 MILLION IN NEW GRANTS FOR HOMELESS PROGRAMS IN NEW MEXICO

ALBUQUERQUE - U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan today awarded $1,950, 634 in new grants to six homeless programs in New Mexico. The grants announced today are an investment in local projects that have never received HUD homeless funds in the past, providing critically needed housing and support services to homeless individuals and families. Today's grants are in addition to the $6.7 million HUD awarded this past January to renew funding to 36 existing New Mexico homeless housing and service programs.

"Today, we build on this Administration's goal to prevent and end homelessness in America," said Donovan. "This funding will make a significant impact in the lives of thousands of people and provide resources to put them on the road of independence."

HUD's Continuum of Care grants fund a wide range of transitional and permanent housing programs as well as supportive services such as job training, case management, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and child care. Street outreach and assessment programs to transitional and permanent housing for homeless persons and families are also funded through these grants. There are three categories of CoC grants: Supportive Housing Program, Shelter + Care and Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Program.

Four of the new grants for New Mexico are under HUD's Supportive Housing Program (SHP), which offers housing and supportive services to allow homeless persons to live as independently as possible, and two are under Shelter Plus Care (S+C), which provides housing and supportive services on a long-term basis for homeless persons with disabilities, (primarily those with serious mental illness, chronic problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or related diseases) and their families who were living in places not intended for human habitation (e.g., streets) or in emergency shelters.

The grantees in New Mexico and amounts awarded are as follows (call for grantee contact names and numbers):

Last year, 19 federal agencies in the Obama Administration announced a plan to end all homelessness through Opening Doors, an unprecedented federal strategy to end veteran and chronic homelessness by 2015, and to end homelessness among children, families, and youth by 2020. In addition to the Continuum of Care grant program, HUD's new Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing (HPRP) Program made possible through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is making a major contribution to the Opening Doors strategy. To date, HPRP has allocated $1.5 billion to prevent more than 875,000 people from falling into homelessness or to rapidly re-house them if they do.

HUD's homelessness grants are reducing long-term or chronic homelessness in America. Based on the Department's latest Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR), chronic homelessness has declined by 30 percent since 2006. This decline is directly attributed to HUD's homeless grants helping to create significantly more permanent housing for those who might otherwise be living on the streets. It was also reported in the AHAR that the number of homeless families increased for the second consecutive year, almost certainly due to the ongoing effects of the recession.

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